Lover Arisen

By J.R. Ward

True love brings a deadly threat to the Black Dagger Brotherhood in this sizzling new novel in J.R. Ward’s #1 New York Times bestselling series.

Possessed by the demon Devina, Balthazar is once again on the hunt for the Book of Spells—and fighting an undeniable attraction to a woman. As a thief, he has stolen a lot of things…but he never thought his heart would be taken by another. Especially not by a human.

As a homicide detective, Erika Saunders knows there is something otherworldly going on in Caldwell, New York. Mutilated bodies that cannot be explained are all over her case list—and then there are her nightmares in which she’s hunted by shadows and captivated by a mysterious man who is both a suspect and a savior.

When Devina’s wish for true love is finally granted, Balthazar and Erika unwittingly become the gateway for the rebirth of an old enemy of the Brothers. Will the very thing that brings them together lead to the ultimate destruction of the Brotherhood? Or will they have to lose everything in order to save the race’s most sacred defenders?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gallery Books
• Release date: Apr 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781982180010

J.R. Ward

J.R. Ward is the author of more than sixty novels, including those in her #1 New York Times bestselling Black Dagger Brotherhood series. There are more than twenty million copies of her novels in print worldwide, and they have been published in twenty-seven different countries. She lives in the south with her family.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

Dhunhd

Four weeks, two days, three hours…

…and exactly thirteen minutes prior to the Present.

To be immortal was to never know death.

As the Omega, brother of the Scribe Virgin, master of all lessers, spectacular purveyor of evil upon the earth, arrived at his lair in Dhunhd and became corporeal, the entity reminded himself that he was immortal.

He would not die. Never, ever. No extinction for him.

Fuck the Dhestroyer Prophecy.

Stumbling forth, he repeated to himself over and over again that he was going to live forever, and rule in hatred and chaos for an eternity and beyond, because he was energy and energy was not just the basis of the universe, it was the universe. Energy did not end, not as long as there were galaxies above the earth, and suns to create light, and planets that do-si-do’d in their orbits. He was infinite, nothing more powerful than he up above on earth, or down below, here in Hell—

Where was he?

The Omega stiffly pivoted and attempted to ascertain his location amid the labyrinth of gray halls. Hadn’t they been white once? Or had they been black? As his mind refused to provide him with an orientation and tripped over its own recollections, he was forced to confront all he’d been refusing to see within himself. He was often lost these recent nights, even in the alleys of downtown Caldwell, even here in his den where he’d played and fucked and recharged for an eon. And why was he afoot? Ordinarily, he would have simply summoned himself unto where he wanted to be in this, his dominion. Ordinarily… he would not have been this depleted.

But he would not die, never, not ever. No extinction for him.

Fuck that prophecy—

Why had he come here?

Ambulating again, in hopes of finding the purpose that had propelled him to this down below, he messy-processed through the corridors of his quarters and tried not to relive the past. After all, one only did that if the present was bad and the future offered no prospects for betterment—and such a hopeless place was not where he was within his destiny. No, if he currently desired a mental return unto prior events along his timeline, he was merely indulging in pleasant memories, the look back unconnected to his situation—

He was lost again.

Or mayhap that was still.

All appeared the same, the corridors, the rooms, the torture stations with their chains and their stains, running together and forming a visual one-note that should not have confused him, but did. With his cognition tangling, and a shocking physical frailty gathering momentum, the Omega’s legs went out from under him and he fell to the hard floor on all fours. The insult to injury was that the pain upon his palms and knees was not sweet. It offered no sexual thrill, and worse, provided no impetus for him to rise and fight further the Black Dagger Brotherhood. The stinging sensations simply… aged him.

In a manner that was wholly incompatible with immortality.

Sitting back on his knees, he regarded his filthy robing. The folds had been a brilliant white once, and from beneath them, the dense black of his essence had always spilled. Now, the draping was gray and his aura was as well, gray as the walls around him, the ceiling above, the walls in all directions. With a dull hand, he brushed at the red bloodstains of the four lessers he had just indoctrinated, humans no longer, soulless vampire hunters their new lease on life. He told himself that the portion of essence that he had imparted unto them was the reason for his current wilting, but he knew it should not have made any difference. He should have had enough of a reservoir to turn a hundred humans into his servants of evil if he so chose.

In the past, he would have been able to… do…

His thought became as lost as he was, traveling off route in his mind, diverting from the sad reality that had initiated it as if going into hiding.

In its place? A sinkhole of defeat that drained even more of the evil’s strength. For all the centuries he had been at war with his sister’s fanged creation, he had always failed to acknowledge that loss for him was a possibility upon the battlefield that his anger and jealousy had conceived. He had recognized only his inevitable triumph over his sister, and he had relished the trophies of the war, those corpses of her birthed species, those vampires she had seen fit to bring into existence because she had been granted a single act of creation. Each death had chipped away at her heart, and the satisfaction he felt with that agony had become the meal he liked best.

It had been such fun, for so long.

Now, however… all those to-and-fros seemed like a struggle conducted by another, the victories as unresonant as if they had never occurred. And as he tried to recall the sadistic joy he had once felt, he pictured Butch O’Neal, former human. If the Omega had only known that capturing the Brotherhood’s pet would endanger his very existence, he would have avoided that mortal like the… well, plague.

Some Trojan horse O’Neal had been. Instead of being a corrupted vessel embraced by those warriors, a weapon of infiltration for the Omega, the sonofabitch had been a tool against the maker who had infected him. The evil had literally engineered his own destruction—and as he considered the manner through which their paths had crossed, he wondered if he could have taken any defense against the Dhestroyer’s creation. It was as if that human had found him, not the other way around—

Arrest thee now this wasted reverie, he muttered.

Bracing himself, he forced his torso and his unreliable legs into a concert of movement that returned him to his height. And then he shuffled forth once more.

He was immortal.

He was never going to die, not ever.

He was immortal. He was never going to die…

The cadence of the words became the steps he took, a metronome that propelled him even as every extension of leg tired him further. And some time later, mayhap it was the matter of a year, a glint of something bright caught the evil’s attention. Stopping himself, he saw that he was upon his private bedding area, and there, across the barren space, a dagger, silver and sharp, stood upon a marble stand, suspended in thin air on its razoring tip.

Yes, he thought. That is why I have come. I remember now.

Propelling himself over to the weapon, he willed his robing off—and when he couldn’t accomplish even that simple magic trick, he brought trembling hands up to the ties at his throat. It had been so long since he had had to work anything mechanically that he fumbled with the knot he had previously manifested with his mind.

The Omega did not want to dwell upon the inefficiency, the ineffectuality of his ten digits. And in any event, he eventually became naked.

He held out his palm to summon the blade. When the weapon refused to heel, he was forced to reach forth and take the hilt of that which ignored his call. The grip was familiar as he curled his hand around it, but the dagger seemed as heavy as a boulder as he removed it from its invisible buttressing.

Lowering his head, he looked down at his sexual organs. Like every other inch of his body, they were but an image that functioned, a prosthesis with bodily fluids, a corporeality that suited his purposes when he needed it, and disappeared back into a closet of illusions when he did not.

Using what felt like the last of his strength, he gathered the soft weights of the balls and cock in his palm. He had a thought that they were warm and heavy in combination.

The dagger glinted again as he brought the blade under that which hung from his hips.

I will not end… he said hoarsely. "I will never end."

And yet as he made the pronouncement, he had a thought that it was a lie. Not a vicious one, but a pitiable one.

He did not want to be over. When time had been his to squander, he had wasted it on much that had not mattered, in the manner of a rich male before a marketplace of beautiful things. Now that seconds were precious, he missed the largesse he had once had like a loved one who had departed dearly.

A tear formed in his eye. He would have gone back in time if he could have. But he was too weak. In his arrogance, he had waited too long—

With a savage yank, he cut off the penis and the scrotum, easily slicing through the delicate, sensitive skin. The pain was gasoline in his veins, his heart exploding in his chest, the rapid pump enlivening him, the adrenaline surge giving him a little of that which he needed a deluge of.

As black blood flowed down the insides of his thighs and pooled around his feet, he lifted his palm up to eye level and drew in through his nose. He smelled nothing. Then again, who could smell themselves? Whether perfume or body odor, the nose only knew what was fresh and new, not that in which it had been stewing.

He had been told once he smelled like baby powder. By a human whom he had disemboweled shortly thereafter.

As he recalled his offense, it seemed so childish. But he had had rage to spare back in those days. Now, he had to ration…

The thought disintegrated as if to prove the point he could no longer recall desiring to make.

Beneath the organs he had removed from himself, black blood gathered in the cup of his hand and ran a descent down his wrist. He watched it flow, black and slow and lazy, gleaming in the ambient light that had no source.

My son. He cleared his throat and spoke more loudly. My son shall recommence and continue if I go no further.

The demand did not effect a damn thing.

My son shall return now!

As naught occurred, t’was the same as his cloak not vanishing and the dagger refusing to come unto his palm, the lack of power within him robbing him of his dominion over objects that should have been an easy summon.

Frustration kindled into anger that alit into rage, and he cast the flesh across to the bedding platform in what should have been a throw of strength. When the momentum was little more than a shove at the air, he knew he should never have let his one and only progeny rot as he had. But he had felt disrespected and underappreciated for all he had done for the male, and though the great Blind King of the vampires was named Wrath, the Omega might as well have had that dark emotion as his own middle name.

He had been so vengeful and so petty. A terrible combination.

Now he was here, abruptly old and infirmed, with no one to help him, no son to bear him up, no legacy left within his Lessening Society. He was doomed to be where all of history retreated with enough passage of days and nights: A distant memory that died out when the last of those who knew him went unto their graves.

He had been hubristic about his future. And now… it was too late.

In disgust with himself, he was going to turn away and head to the place where he would find one last chance for a rival… when he noticed movement upon the bedding platform.

Shuffling forward, he stood over the black bloody mess he had lamely tossed over. The components of what had been his sexual organs were twisting and turning upon themselves, melting, melding… reforming. Germinating.

It was a tender mass, however, and he wished he could remain and protect his only begotten. Knowing he had to leave it in such a vulnerable state, the Omega stood over his progeny and played witness to the mass doubling in size, and then incrementally coalescing into an infant: Arms and legs, chubby and uncoordinated, sprouted from the trunk, as the head also emerged. Movement unrelated to the gestation was next, the limbs beginning to flex and churn.

Underneath the veil of black blood, the skin was white and matte, like bone.

My son, he whispered.

If the evil had been capable of love, he knew that the feeling so many lived and died for was what was coursing through him the now, the strange, unfamiliar weight behind his breast forging a connection with the burgeoning young that was nothing logical, everything instinctual.

And indeed, though he resented it, he knew that the sensation was in fact love because he had felt it for one other. His sister, however, the so-called great Virgin Scribe, had always been too busy for him, too concerned with her single act of creation, to pay any attention to the brother who had followed her everywhere when they had first been called into existence by the Creator. Her negligence had been the seat of his hatred for the vampires.

So petty. So childish.

I must needs go. He brushed his hands over eyes that watered. You shall survive. With or without me. You’ve done it once before.

Though he wanted to stay, he had to get into the Brotherhood’s most sacred place, to those jars the fighters had collected over the course of the war. In them, though dried and in some cases ancient, were the hearts that had pumped his blood through the bodies of his inductees, trophies for the Brothers as dead vampires had been his trophies against the Scribe Virgin. If he could consume those repositories, he could fuel himself by accessing the residue of his essence left in those chambers. Yes, it would be only scraps, but there was volume. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cardiac muscles would be available to him, and even morsels could fill one up if there were enough upon the plate.

He was also certain where they were located. The Creator had been forced, out of fairness, to allow the Omega one advantage to cure an act of overreaching by the Scribe Virgin.

So no, he would not die, never, not ever. No extinction for him.

Fuck that prophecy.

But just in case? His son would live on after him—and as he had to force himself to go, and as he worried over what would happen to the young if he did not survive, there was an irony. The Omega’s need to ensure the continuation of a part of himself, of a fraction of who and what he was?

It was the one and only thing he had ever had in common with mortals.

Now he understood why humans cherished their children.

And vampires, too.

CHAPTER ONE

Present Day

267 Primrose Court

Caldwell, New York

No, not this one. This one is not for you."

As Detective Treyvon Abscott stepped in the path of Detective Erika Saunders, she stopped. Then again, that was what you did when you hit a brick wall. Her partner was a former college football player, an honorably discharged Marine, and at least four inches taller and seventy pounds heavier than she was. But even with all that going for him, he still braced his weight and put both palms out in front of himself, as if he were protecting his end zone against the likes of a Mack truck.

Dispatch sent me here. Erika crossed her arms over her chest. So I know you’re not standing in my way right now. You’re just really not.

Behind her colleague, a run-of-the mill two-story house with an attached two-car garage was strobe-lit in blue, the flashing lights of the squad cars parked in front of the driveway reflecting off the storm windows, turning a family’s home into a disco ball of tragedy.

I don’t care what dispatch said. Trey’s voice was quiet, but I’m-not-fucking-around deep. I told you on the phone. I got this on my own.

Erika frowned. FYI, your detective of the month award could get revoked for this kind of scene hoarding—

Go home, Erika. I’m telling you, as a friend—

Of course, I—she indicated herself —have never gotten a collegial award. You want to know why?

Wait, what? her partner said. Like she was speaking a different language.

She dodged around him and spoke over her shoulder as he stumbled over his own feet to turn around. I’m not a good listener and I don’t like people in my way. That’s why I never get awards.

Marching up the walkway, she heard cursing in her wake, but Trey was going to have to get over himself—and she was surprised by the territoriality. Usually, the two of them got along great. They’d been assigned together since January, after his first partner, Jose de la Cruz, retired following a long and distinguished career. She had no idea what kind of hair Trey had across his ass about this particular—

Hey, Andy, she said to the uniformed cop at the door.

—scene, but she wasn’t going to worry about it.

Detective. The uniformed officer shifted to the side so she could pass. You need booties?

Got ’em. As she slipped a set on over her street shoes, she noted that the hedges around the entrance were all trimmed and a little Easter flag was pastel’ing itself on a pole off to the left. Thanks.

The second she entered a shallow foyer, she smelled both vanilla-scented candles and fresh blood—and her brain went to a hypothetical episode of Cupcake Wars where one of the contestants got their hand stuck in a mixer.

Care for some plasma with your Victoria sponge?

Wait, that would be The Great British Bake Off, wouldn’t it.

While her brain played chew toy with all kinds of stupid connections, she let it warm itself up and glanced to the right. The disrupted living room was what she expected in terms of furnishings and decor. Everything was solidly middle class, especially all the framed pictures of two parents and a daughter in the bookshelves, everybody aging up through the years, the kid getting taller and more mature, the parents getting grayer and thicker around the middle.

Those photographs were her first clue as to why Trey had tried to put his foot down.

Well actually… there had been a couple of others when she’d been getting basic details from dispatch.

Ignoring the alarm bells that started to ring in her head, she stepped around a broken lamp. In spite of all the homey-homey, the place looked like a bar fight had gone down in front of the electric fireplace: The flowered couch was out of alignment and its cushions scattered on the rug, one armchair was knocked over, and the cheap glass coffee table was shattered.

There was blood splatter on the gray walls and the low-nap carpet.

The facedown body in the center of the sixteen-by-twelve-foot room was that of an older white male, the bald spot on the back of the head identifying him as the father according to one of the candids taken at a field hockey game. He had one arm up, the other down by his side, and his clothes were vaguely office, a button-down shirt, it looked like, tucked into polyester-blend slacks. No belt. Shoes were still on.

Two long steps brought her in close, and her knees popped as she dropped onto her haunches. The knife sticking out of his back had done quite a bit of work before before being left deep inside his rib cage: There were a good four to five other stab wounds, going by the holes in the shirt and the bloodstains on the cotton fabric.

As she took a deep breath, she had a thought that half the oxygen in Caldwell had mysteriously disappeared.

Erika.

Her name was said with an exhaustion she was familiar with. She’d heard that special brand of tired in a lot of people’s voices when they were trying to talk sense into her.

Frenzied attack. She indicated the pattern of stabbings, even though it wasn’t like there was any confusion about what she was addressing. By someone strong. While this victim was trying to run away after they’d scuffled.

Erika rose up and went farther into the house. As she passed through an archway that opened into a kitchen, she was careful not to step on any bloodstains. The second body was faceup on the wood laminate flooring in front of the stove, the wife and mother sprawled in a pool of her own blood. The victim had extensive head and neck trauma, her facial features totally unidentifiable, the bones all broken, the flesh pulverized. So much blood covered the front of her that it was hard to make out the pattern on her t-shirt, but the leggings had to be LuLaRoe, given the garish repeat of peaches against a bright blue background.

Above her on the cooktop, a glass-lidded saucepan full of what appeared to be homemade Bolognese had boiled over, a black-and-brown halo of the stuff toasted around the heating element’s coil. Behind it, a big pot filled with only two inches of water sat on the largest of the burners, and next to the mess, on the counter, an unopened box of generic-brand spaghetti was beside a cutting board that had half a diced onion on it.

The woman had had no clue as she’d chopped the onion, browned the beef, and filled the boiling pot that it was the last meal she’d ever cook for her family.

Bile rose into the back of Erika’s throat as she glanced across at the open cellar door, the stairwell lit by an overhead feature mounted to the side wall.

The killer had two weapons, she said to no one in particular. Mostly so she could get her goiter to calm down. The knife used on the father and a hammer used here. Or maybe it was a crowbar.

Hammer, Trey interjected grimly. It’s upstairs in the hall.

She started the water boiling. Erika went over to the basement steps and breathed in deep. Then she went down there to the washing machine—which explains the vanilla fragrance. It’s not scented candles. It’s Suavitel laundry detergent. My college roommate, Alejandra, used it all the time.

Erika—

She hears the commotion upstairs. Runs up to see what’s going on. By the time she’s on this floor, her husband is dead or in the process of dying and the killer is on her with that hammer. Erika met Trey’s dark eyes. There was no damage on the front door so the father let the killer in. Do we have a Ring?

No.

Where are the other two bodies—upstairs?

Trey nodded. But listen, Erika, you don’t need to go—

You’re on my last nerve saying my name like that. Anytime you want to cut out the pity, I’m ready to be treated like the adult I am instead of the child I was.

She went back out through the living room and took the carpeted steps to the second floor. As soon as she got to the top landing, all she had to do was look down the dim, narrow hallway. At the far end, in a bedroom that was the color of Pepto-Bismol, two bodies were in full view, one on the bed, the other propped up against the wall on the floor.

Erika blinked. Blinked again.

And then she couldn’t move any part of herself. She wasn’t even breathing.

Let’s go back downstairs, Trey said softly, right by her ear.

When her colleague took her arm, she pulled free of the compassion and went forward. She stopped when she got to the open doorway. The body on the bed was half naked, a t-shirt shoved up above her pink-and-white bra, her black Lululemon leggings yanked down and hanging off of one foot. She had dark hair, just like both her parents, and it was long and pretty, curling at the ends. In her right hand… was a gun. A nine millimeter.

For some reason, the pink polish on the fingernails on the grip stood out. There were no chips in the finish, and as Erika glanced over at the cluttered top of the dresser, there was a little bottle of OPI in the exact shade. The girl had probably done them earlier in the day, or at least very recently.

Right next to the nail polish on the bureau was a framed picture. The girl who was now dead was standing next to a young man who was a good head taller than she was. She was looking into the camera with a wide smile. He was looking at her.

Erika’s eyes shifted over to the second body. The teenage boy in the photo was propped up against the pink wall, his legs straight out in front of him like he was a scarecrow that had fallen off its pole-mount. He had the muscularity of an athlete, with broad shoulders and a thick neck, and he was handsome in the way of a quintessential jock, square-jawed with deep-set eyes. There was a big patch of blood on the front of his Lincoln H.S. Football shirt and some splatter up his throat as well as under his chin. His hands were stained red, likely from when he’d killed the mother by beating her face in with the hammer.

His jeans were open at the fly.

Focusing on the gunshot wound, she noticed a second one, lower down, just under the diaphragm.

You got him twice in the torso, Erika thought numbly. Attagirl.

As she took a step forward, she noticed that the door to the room was busted in. Between one blink and the next, she heard the pounding, the crying, the screaming, as he’d broken the thing down after the daughter had locked herself inside, after her parents were murdered right under her—

Erika covered her ears as they began to ring.

It’s fine, she mumbled as Trey stepped in front of her again. I’m fine.

I’ll walk you out.

The hell you will.

Leaning to the side, Erika looked at the girl’s face. She was staring at the ceiling, the makeup around her now-vacant eyes smudged, the sooty rivers down her cheeks and smeared lipstick making a clown mask out of what had no doubt been very expertly applied, given the amount of brushes and compacts on that dresser top.

There was one other mark on her visage, but it wasn’t from MAC or NARS or whatever. The bullet hole at her temple was a circular penetration, and the entry wound was relatively neat, just some powder residue around a small pink-and-red extrusion of flesh. It was what was on the other side of her skull that was more gruesome, the bone, blood, and brain matter splattering across her pink duvet.

He came with three weapons, Erika heard herself say. The knife, the hammer… and this gun.

Had she gotten the nine millimeter away from him as he’d attacked her? Yes, that was how it had to have gone down. He had broken in here after he’d killed both her parents, and he’d gotten on her… and she’d somehow disarmed him… maybe because she’d pretended to go along with the sex?

She must have listened to the slaughter downstairs, heard her parents’ panic and pain. At least one of the pair of them, probably both, had no doubt yelled up at her to lock herself in and call for help—

The parents don’t know yet, Trey said. His, I mean. We just sent a squad car over to the address.

Who found them all? she asked roughly.

We did. She called nine-one-one before she shot herself.

Erika’s eyes quickly scanned the bed—there it was. A cell phone was on the bloodstained duvet cover, right by her.

The girl had held on to the nine millimeter, but not the phone.

The operator who took the call heard the gun go off. Trey went over and knelt by the boy’s body. The girl was crying so hard, she could barely speak. But she managed to give his name, and tell the operator that he’d broken in and killed her parents. Then she provided her own address and… pulled the trigger a third time.

But it wasn’t her fault, Erika whispered as she leaned across the bed to meet that vacant stare. It wasn’t your fault, sweetheart. I promise you.

As her voice broke, she cleared her throat. And cleared it again.

Without conscious thought, her hand went to a spot below her left collarbone. Through her jacket, she couldn’t feel the scars, but they were there.

Surrounded by the black-hole stillness of death, Erika’s own past came on her like a mugger, stealing reality from her, sucking her back to the one night she never wanted to relive and always did. Always. She had fought back, too, during the worst moments of her family’s life. And God knew, there had been so many times in the last fourteen years that she had wished she had killed herself—or could.

Trying to control the urge to vomit, she listened to a surge of voices down below by the front door. Some more people were entering the scene. No doubt the photographer. Maybe it was CSI already.

Erika looked at her partner, focusing on him properly for the first time. As always, Trey was military-trim in his trademark CPD fleece, his fade sharp as always, his clean-shaven jaw the kind of thing Superman would have envied. As he stared back at her, his dark eyes were hooded and his lips drawn tight.

It’s okay, Erika said. I can handle this. But I appreciate you… you know, looking out for me.

If you want to go, no one will blame you.

She looked back down to the bed, to the beautiful young girl whose life had been cut so short. All those family photographs in the living room? All those pictures that had been consciously and carefully taken to record her growing up with her loving parents?

No more pictures. Of any of them—

Out in the stairwell, steps creaked as someone ascended.

Actually, that wasn’t correct, Erika thought. There would be one more set of images, taken by somebody trained in forensics, to record the way they had all died.

I can handle this, Erika said to her partner.

And also to herself.

She didn’t believe the words at all.

CHAPTER TWO

2464 Crandall Avenue

Approx. 7.2 miles away

No! No, no, I don’t want this, I don’t want you! Stop—

Balthazar, son of Hanst, woke up shouting and shoving hands off his leather-clad hips. As he beat at his privates, he exploded up to his feet and tried to get away from the demon who was on him, all around him, inside of him. Banging into something hard—a tree?—he ricocheted into thin air, tripped, fell.

Landed in something soggy.

As he planked himself on his palms and the tips of his shitkickers, a nose-ringing combination of soot, toxic chemicals, and wet dirt drilled into his sinuses. The stench was what orientated him: He was at the site of the house fire where Sahvage and Mae had both almost lost their lives.

With desperation and a good dose of numb stupidity, he looked around his shoulder at the ruins of what had been a nice little ranch house. The cremated remains of the structure were bathed in shades of gray and pale blue, the ash-coated fragments of beams and boards, Sheetrock and plywood, furniture and belongings, nothing that could ever be put back together and made usable again. The blaze had been so intense that there was even scorching over the property line, the fences and houses to the left, right, and rear all airbrushed with soot.

The neighbors were going to have a helluva Windex bill, but at least they had something still to clean.

Crab-walking over to a drier patch of toasted grass, he rose to his full height and brushed off his leathers. Given all the shit that was going on, worrying about whether he had ash on his knees was ridiculous. Then again, the list of things he could control was a short one, and in life, you had to take what you were given.

Sometimes this was only keeping your pants clean. And of course, what he really wanted was to keep them on when he was asleep.

"Fuck. Fuck."

Balz glanced back at the charred maple he’d run into and deconstructed his nap time. After he’d stalked through the rubble and come up with nothing, he’d copped a squat at the base of the tree to consider all his no-go. That split-second time-out was all it had taken. Sleep had claimed him with such force and stealth, he couldn’t remember fighting the tackle of it, and that was all the demon needed. His lack of consciousness was Devina’s open door and she never failed to take advantage of the invitation he never offered.

He needed that goddamn Book of spells. If he wanted to lose the demon, he was going to have to find the thing and use it.

Reassessing the debris field, he wondered if he should walk it once more. Then again, why would anything with pages and a cover survive this kind of heat?

Because the Book wasn’t just a book. That was why.

And to think that at one point, he’d had the stinking, repulsive weight in his hands, felt that human-skin binding, held the heft of the parchment pages—and he’d let it go.

Lassiter… you fucking asshole.

The fallen angel had told him there was another way to get Devina evicted from his mental. So at the moment it had really counted, during that tug-o’-war with Sahvage, Balz had gone the Frozen route and let it go. But since then, he’d thought better of the angel’s solution. True love wasn’t going to save him—

An image of a human woman in a navy-blue suit barged in and pulled a chair up to his mind’s eye.

Abruptly, all he could see was her looking at him over the gun she was pointing at him. Her eyes had been sharp, her brows locked into a stop-right-there-asshole glare, her stance like something out of an action movie. Funny, he remembered every one of her particulars, and not just because he was a thief and she was a cop and never the twain shall meet. To say nothing of the species divide.

No, he remembered her like she was something he had been searching for in all the homes he’d ever broken into, and all the gems he’d taken, and all the money he’d stashed in his pockets.

But you’re not saving me, woman, he said to the moonlit night, the ashes around him, the shithole situation he was in.

True love didn’t exist, for one thing. That shit was just a Disney delusion, peddled to humans for profit. For another, the fallen angel might well have tossed the romance angle out because he’d just finished a Sandra Bullock marathon and While You Were Sleeping was on auto-loop in his poindexter brain.

One thing that was real fucking clear? Thanks to Lassiter’s piss-poor advice, Balz was now out of options, stalked in his sleep by a sex harpy, and half insane from lack of REM.

As he checked to see if his fly was still buttoned, a wave of nausea spiked and he was glad he hadn’t eaten anything. The feel of that demon straddling his hips, while she stared down at him with glittering black eyes full of jealous hatred—

How dare you, you bastard. And she’s just a human.

The demon’s voice came to him clear as a bell, and as the words translated into proper meaning, Balz felt the blood drain from his head. Glancing over to the tree again, he wondered if he was dubbing that jealousy in out of paranoia or whether it was something that had actually been said to him just now.

Had Devina found out about…

He told himself to get a grip. There was nothing to find out about that human detective and him. For fuck’s sake, he’d crossed paths with her for a split second, when she’d walked in on him and Sahvage playing mine-all-mine over the Book at that collector’s crib. And she didn’t even remember they’d ever met because he’d been careful to scrub her memories.

There was nothing for Devina to get bent over. Nothing at all—

Yeah, except for your preoccupation with the woman, you sad-sack, his inner ass-kicker pointed out. And just now you fell asleep for the first time since you’ve seen her. You think your demon night rider ain’t going to know you want to do more than polish that detective’s badge and gun?

With a curse, he let his head drop back on his spine.

Not her, he growled. You’re not going to fuck with her—

The demon’s voice interrupted him, sure as if she were standing right behind him: I don’t like competition even if it’s beneath me.

Balz palmed one of his forties and swung around, pointing the muzzle at—

A whole lot of thin air. And yet he spoke up like his enemy was corporeal and within earshot: She’s not fucking competition—she’s not anything! What the fuck are you talking about?

As his yell echoed off a charred fence line, he could swear he heard feminine laughter coming back at him on the wind, mocking him. But if this was really happening, if the demon was making a target out of that innocent human woman, Devina was going to get a nasty surprise. It was one thing for him to be used as unwilling gym equipment. Another entirely if some bystander who had

Reviews for Lover Arisen

[Andreea Pupaza · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The worst possible experience ever! Lots of nonsense and tons of script just to fill up pages and stuff up a brain. Vaguely related to the series and impersonal, yet unreadable unless utterly familiar with the whole story

[alissa1-7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very good. I didn’t know this specific character was going to be the star of this book, but I liked his and Erika’s story. No cliffhanger, but the stage is set for more. Nice twist in the series.


“That was life, though. For all the choices consciously made, there were forces at work under the ground of daily and nightly existence, deep aquifers of fate that drove an existence that fluctuated in and out of happiness, sorrow, boredom, fear, up above.”